by Fritz Galt
Everett wanted to keep up with the investigation. “I’m taking my wife to dinner at the Schweitzerhof tonight to make up for earlier today. You can reach me there, but only if it’s important.”
“I understand completely,” Tobias said, and hung up.
The phone beeped before Everett could hang up. It was the secretary with a message to call CPU.
He keyed in the Communication Programming Unit.
“Hi, Everett,” a man said before Everett could open his mouth. “This is Chuck. We just received a cable from Washington. You might want to come up here and read it.”
Normally such news from the CPU called for dropping everything and responding. But today was different.
“Just messenger it to me, Chuck.”
“Will do.”
The phone beeped again as soon as Everett hung up. The LCD simply indicated an outside call. “Yes?”
“Everett?”
“Mick?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“God am I glad to hear you. Are you safe?”
“Sure, I’m safe.”
“Then where the hell have you been?”
“Lots of places. Right now, I’m standing at the Saas Fee bus terminal.”
“Saas Fee? Do you have any idea what trouble your absence has caused? And you’ve been at a ski resort the whole time?”
Mick continued, unfazed by the accusation, “Have you heard from my wife?”
“Yes, just this morning. And that’s another thing. Do you know what she’s been up to? We tried to nab her at the Hilton in Geneva, but she had just left. She told me she had more pressing business to attend to than reporting back to work. You two are driving me nuts.”
He heard a relieved sigh on Mick’s end. “Where was she going?”
“Got me. But she was staying with Khalid Slimane, a Polisario Front terrorist.”
“So that’s his name.” Mick paused.
“You know about Khalid?” Everett said, surprised.
“Yeah, and I’m going after him.”
“Now don’t tell me you’re heading off somewhere else.”
“Not right away. First I need to see you in Bern. I need you to make me a diplomatic passport and an embassy security card right away. Can you have them ready by six tonight?”
“I guess I could do that, and I have some more questions for you. I’ll bring the passport and ID to the Schweitzerhof tonight where I’m having dinner.”
“Any news from my brother?”
“None. And Natalie didn’t say anything about him. As a matter of fact, she hung up on me.”
“That’s strange. I’ll see you at the Schweitzerhof.”
“Wait a minute. What have you been doing all this while?”
He found he was talking to a dead line.
He threw the phone down and squeezed his forefingers against his temples. This was not his day.
So much was happening that he couldn’t cover all bases at once. He needed his team back. And that would start with Mick. He didn’t know where Mick had been or where he expected to find Khalid Slimane, but, damn it, Everett needed warm bodies in the office, and he needed all the killing to stop.
His finger was poised over the extension of Paul Schroeder, the Regional Security Officer. They needed to round up a few local security guards and nab Mick when he attempted to enter the Schweitzerhof.
Would Mick resist? Probably. What would Everett gain by hauling his main operative in? What would he lose?
At some point, he had to trust that Mick knew what he was doing. Everett didn’t know Alec that well, and Natalie only slightly better. The fact was, Mick was the salt of the earth and Everett would trust Mick’s judgment before he trusted his own.
On one hand, it might look bad on Everett’s employee evaluation report that he hadn’t stopped a loose cannon in his section. On the other hand, physically assaulting a fellow employee would also leave a black mark.
As Mick requested, Everett would order a replacement passport and ID, so Mick could disappear and keep the whole mess going. Reluctantly, he picked up the phone and punched in the consular office.
“Hi, Everett.”
“Uh, hi, Cindy. We need a diplomatic passport and security card made for Mick Pierce immediately. I’ll need them both by six.”
“It’s almost four-thirty.”
“He’s coming to town just to pick them up. Do you have his photo on file?”
“I’ll get it from Security.”
“Thanks.”
“But—”
He set down the phone. It beeped again, and he grabbed it.
“Busy day? It’s the Consul General in Geneva. Line Two.”
He pressed Line Two.
Merle Clark was a deliberate man. “Good afternoon, Everett.”
“Good afternoon, Merle.” He closed his eyes, trying to slow down and match Merle’s pace. “What’s up?”
“We received an alarming report from the police down here this afternoon. They discovered a body in Alec Pierce’s apartment.”
“Is it Alec?”
“They say it isn’t. I haven’t been down there to identify it yet, but I gave them a visual description over the phone and they said, ‘Wrong man.’ The identity card on him reads something like Slimey.”
Everett froze in his seat. “Khalid Slimane?”
“That’s it.”
At last! They had finally tracked him down. The man whose identity papers were found on the victim of the storm, the guy who impersonated a mortician, who worked at CERN, who seduced Mick’s wife and who was a terrorist for the Polisario Front was now dead in a Geneva apartment.
Everett was more than a little curious about how it all went down. “Was he murdered?”
“Gunshot wound to the neck. The apartment was in a shambles. Killed Alec’s dog, too. The word ‘Proteus’ was scrawled on the wall. In blood. Mean anything to you?”
Everett shook his head. “Nothing. Know when he got killed?”
“The apartment and the victim haven’t been touched for days. Water had overflowed in the bathroom and flooded the place.”
That didn’t fit. The Khalid he knew had entered his hotel fresh as a daisy with Natalie just last night. “Thanks for calling, Merle. I’ll pass the information along. I’m glad they didn’t kill Alec, but I doubt that’s Khalid Slimane.”
“You wouldn’t mind telling Alec about his apartment and his dog, would you?”
“If I can find the poor sop.” He hung up the phone. Okay, so they tried to kill Alec in his apartment.
The telephone number of Suzy Kraft’s son stared at him from his desk. She would never see him play ball at Virginia Tech.
The new secretary called on the intercom.
“CPU sent down the cable. Do you want me to bring it in?”
“Sure. Why not?”
Claudia Strapping opened his door and walked across the office to his desk where she handed him the cable.
“Thank you, Claudia,” he said, forcing himself to be patient.
“You’re welcome, Mr. Hoyle.”
Her gaze traveled around the room. A stack of unread cables draped off the edge of his desk. His window air conditioner had long since expired, and puffed warm air. His forehead was a wall of sweat.
“Is there anything I can do for you before I leave?” she offered.
“You’re leaving?”
She rapped a finger against her teeth. “Teeth cleaning today.”
“Okay, then there’s nothing else.”
She smiled and turned to face the door before she shifted her weight and began to operate her long legs.
When the door finally clicked shut, he lifted the receiver off the hook and tossed it into his wastebasket.
Trying to ignore the insistent hum it made, he leaned back and held up the yellow cable from CPU.
From Washington, DC. New draft of the House Authorization Bill 965041-B contains deep cuts in the CIA budget. SATO orders immediate elimination o
f most Agency post-to-post travel and any future funding of cooperative programs with the State Department. Cancel any liaison with State in matters of security, courier service and other financial obligations at once.
A studied calm swept over him. The House of Representatives was right. Anything the Agency did for State, whether it was Alec’s security report or Mick chasing after his wife, had turned out to be a mess at the expense of human life. If the CIA couldn’t handle such things properly, they didn’t deserve the funding.
But what in the world was SATO? He’d never heard that acronym.
Alas, there was so much he didn’t know.
At last, he reached under his desk and pulled out the phone. It was time to call Suzy’s son.
Chapter 25
The airplane bearing Natalie and Khalid circled low over Casablanca.
They were heading to the funeral of Khalid’s friend, but she was hoping for more. She hoped to learn more about the Proteus Jihad in Morocco.
She looked out the window at the golden Corniche, a wide strip of beach rimmed by mansions, seafood restaurants and hotels. Beyond that, modern white office buildings gleamed in the afternoon sunlight.
In the cool cabin air, Natalie smoothed her new dress over her knees. It was a conservative outfit compared with what she had worn the night before. She couldn’t walk out of the airport in Casablanca wearing a sleazy sequined gown, so she had spent a frantic moment at Rodin’s in the Geneva airport purchasing a pair of ankle-length outfits.
The plane set down gently to the south of Casablanca and bounced up to the Mohammed V Airport terminal.
She looked out at the dry flatlands. How strange it was that one could step off an airplane and be anywhere.
Today, it would be Morocco.
Caught in a flood of returning Moroccans, she was swept into the dark terminal and ended up in a separate line from Khalid. He signaled for her to stay where she was.
She shuffled forward toward a young woman who took her time questioning each new arrival.
Behind her, she felt the presence of baby-faced young men in smart green uniforms. They held assault rifles at the ready.
Whenever in a completely alien environment, her first instinct was to look for the familiar. The female officer processing passports was well groomed, proud and methodical. Natalie could relate to her.
At last, she reached the window and handed over her tourist passport.
“Occupation?” the woman asked, without looking up.
On the airplane, she had tucked her black diplomatic passport deep in her purse and decided against filling in her occupation on the immigration slip. She thought it might help avoid conflict with immigration. But she was wrong.
She sighed. The first thing she would say to this woman with whom she felt a connection would be a lie. “I’m an editor,” she said.
The woman flipped to the back pages of the passport.
“Are you a journalist?”
She was not only fluent in English, but inquisitive as well.
“No.”
“Are you carrying video tapes? Books? Journals? Newspapers?”
“No.”
“What do you edit?”
Natalie already regretted saying she was an editor. In Morocco, it appeared that information seemed to be a major enemy of the state. She decided on the most innocuous subject possible. “I edit children’s books.”
She waited tensely. The only children’s book she could think of at the moment was “Green Eggs and Ham.”
She couldn’t wait for the relationship to end.
At last, the woman seemed satisfied and wrote “Children’s Editor” neatly in the blank.
“Why are you here?” she shot out.
It seemed a standard question.
“Tourism,” Natalie said.
“Where are you staying?”
“A friend’s house.”
That caught the woman’s attention, and she looked up from her paperwork.
“Just a friend,” Natalie said with a smile.
“Where?”
“In Casablanca.”
The woman thought about it for a moment. Then, finally, she glanced at the long line of people, flipped the passport onto the counter for Natalie, and motioned for the next in line.
Natalie scooped up the passport and hurried after Khalid, who was waiting by the baggage carousel.
“Any problems?” he asked.
“Just an incredible hassle,” she said.
They waited in silence as baggage from their flight climbed up a conveyor and slid down onto a circular belt. When the last bag tumbled out of the machine, several passengers remained.
The carrousel squealed to a halt, and a tabby cat poked its face out the opening.
“Now what?” Natalie grumbled.
Sweat trickled down Khalid’s cheeks and agitation worked its way around his face. “I’m going to find the airport manager.”
She didn’t want to draw any more attention to themselves. “Can’t we just file a claim?”
Inside the minuscule office, a calm official with a bushy mustache faced a passive, gawking throng that flowed out into the terminal. The portrait of a handsome young man hung from the wall. Misplaced luggage was stacked outside the office windows, obscuring the rest of her view.
She nudged Khalid up to the periphery of the mob. He worked his way between people, not bothering to excuse himself. Soon he stood directly behind the couple being helped.
The clerk was speaking both Arabic and French. At one point, he spoke German into the telephone. Then he sat down at a computer console and began to type.
The clock on the wall ticked away. A long fax spilled onto the floor.
Khalid tried to get the man’s attention, but only got a preoccupied wave of the hand.
“Let’s go,” Khalid said at last, grabbing her hand and turning away.
She followed him into the cavernous arrivals hall. Above them, the ceiling soared several stories high.
“If my bag wasn’t on this flight, it’s too late,” he explained. “I’ll call later and have it sent to me.”
They walked among businessmen who crisscrossed the black floor in white robes. Women wearing black shawls leaned on their airport carts, drumming their fingers against their chins, studying the arrivals board. Natalie picked up snatches of Arabic and what she supposed was Berber.
She looked around for anything familiar. Children and young men wore Western garb. All others wore robe-like gowns.
Then the PA announcer’s voice echoed around the terminal. In French, the woman announced a flight departing for Johannesburg. She then repeated the message in Arabic and English, each time using a different personality as if she were three different people.
Natalie couldn’t help smiling at the acting job.
They stepped outside into a dry wind. Brilliant sunshine glinted off a parking lot full of cars.
Khalid raised a hand and hailed a cab that was already full of people.
“Settat,” he told the driver, and popped the back door open.
“What?” Natalie said.
“Get in.”
He helped her squeeze into the back seat next to three other people.
Her hair fell against the shoulder of the woman beside her. The woman’s small, dark eyes glared at Natalie through a triangular opening in her black haik headgear.
“Sorry.”
Khalid jumped in front and slapped some money in the driver’s hand.
Natalie settled into the sunken coils of the seat. Completely full, the old Mercedes Benz finally left the airport.
Wearing full-length djellabahs of white, black or brown, men moved like inverted ice cream cones along the dusty shoulders of the frontage road. She tried, but couldn’t see their faces in the shadow of their pointed hoods.
Soon the taxi was the only car rocketing down a deserted highway, skirting the occasional dilapidated car or truck that was stopped for maintenance in the middle of t
he highway.
On the shoulder, donkeys lurched from side to side under the weight of bricks or oranges. Some riders were perched lazily on the donkeys’ hindquarters, while others were pulled in carts.
The cab zipped down the highway that stretched south through fertile plains. Signs directed them onward to Marrakesh.
Through the dusty windshield, she spotted brilliant red banners proclaiming the number 34 and featuring twin red arched doors with black stars.
She tapped Khalid on the shoulder. “What’s 34?”
“The King’s thirty-fourth year on the throne,” he said sourly. “This is the King’s Highway.”
At first, evenly spaced trees lined the road, then eventually they disappeared. Cropland gradually turned to rock-strewn wasteland.
The sun fell rapidly and picked up an orange tint from a cloud that lingered over the fields.
Along an unmarked stretch of road, miles outside of any town, without a building or road in sight, the shrouded woman next to Natalie called something out.
The driver skidded to a halt, not bothering to pull off the road.
The woman reached across Natalie and opened the door.
“What is it?” Natalie asked.
The woman started pushing her out of the taxi.
“I’m not getting out. Khalid, help me.”
“Just get out,” he said.
Soon Natalie was standing on the asphalt, with hot, dry air pressing against her face.
The woman crawled out, then rose to her full height, her back straight and proud.
“Bye,” Natalie said, and ducked inside.
The taxi lurched forward before she could slam the door shut.
She looked back at the woman who stood beside the rocks and thorn bushes, alone in her heavy black haik.
Chapter 26
Everett began what he hoped would be a low-key dinner with his wife at the Hotel Gauer Schweitzerhof.
As desired, the white table linens, the impeccable service, the harpist in the corner and the reassuringly staid atmosphere presented him in his most respectable light. For the first time in months, Estrella seemed to focus her attention only on him.
Her short black hair looked stylish, and her ivory-toned suit was a perfect fit.